Slaying demons and eliminating evil, a martial saint among mortals.

Qin Lie sat on his horse, his hand resting on the Demon-Slaying Blade at his waist.

After the assassination attempt at the tea stall, I felt uneasy.

After walking for a while, a village appeared ahead.

The village is small, with only a few dozen households.

The mud-brick houses were packed together, but many of them had peeling paint, revealing the yellow mud underneath.

Logically speaking, at this time of day, the village should be filled with the sounds of cooking smoke, roosters crowing, and dogs barking.

But the village in front of us was very quiet, with only a few wisps of smoke drifting out from the rooftops and then dissipating.

Upon getting closer, Qin Lie could see clearly that the villagers were carrying things out.

The men carried grain on their backs, the women carried bundles on their shoulders, and the elderly led the children, moving from house to house towards the village entrance.

No one had a clear expression on their face, but Qin Lie could tell at a glance that they were panicking inside; their hands were trembling as they moved things.

Li Hu reined in his horse and glanced back at Lu Chen.

"Boss Lu, it seems the people in this village are moving away. The drumming last night must have been really scary."

Lu Chen nodded without saying a word, dismounted, and walked towards the village entrance.

At the village entrance stood a middle-aged man who looked like the village chief, holding a piece of paper and writing something down stroke by stroke.

Upon seeing their black uniforms from the Demon Suppression Division, he was taken aback for a moment, then took a few steps forward to greet them.

"You must be officials from the Demon Suppression Division? We've been waiting for you."

Lu Chen raised his hand and showed his Demon-Suppressing Token.

"We are from the Demon Slayer Bureau of Dongxuan Town. My surname is Lu. Were the people in the village moved away by your organization?"

The village chief nodded repeatedly.

"Yes, yes, it was organized by the old man."

"My lords, you may not know this, but these past few nights we've been hearing the sound of drums coming from the mountains."

"Thump, thump, thump, it's so eerie to hear."

"The loudest sound was last night. There were seven knocks. All the dogs in the village huddled in their kennels, too scared to make a sound, just whimpering."

"Guess what happened to that old locust tree at the east end of the village?"

"The leaves were still green during the day on the first day, but when we went to check on them the next morning, they were all grayish."

Qin Lie listened with some doubt in his heart. How could Ye Zi turn gray overnight?

"Are all the villagers willing to leave?"

The village chief sighed, his wrinkles deepening.

"Most of them are willing to leave, after all, saving their lives is the most important thing. It's just that there are a few elderly people who absolutely refuse to move, saying that their ancestors have been buried here for generations, they can't bear to leave their homeland, and they want to die in their own home. I've almost worn my lips out trying to persuade them, but they just won't listen."

Lu Chen frowned after hearing this.

"Whether you want to leave or not, you must leave before sunset tonight. No one is allowed to stay in the village."

The village chief opened his mouth as if to say something, but in the end he didn't say anything, and just nodded heavily.

Just then, the door of a nearby mud house creaked open, and an old man with white hair, leaning on a cane, walked out shakily.

"Go, go, go! Everyone else is leaving, but I'm not going."

"I've lived here for seventy years. My parents are buried here. I'm not going anywhere else!"

Li Hu walked over, and this usually boisterous man suddenly lowered his voice.

"Old man, why are you doing this? What's the use of guarding the ancestral graves if you're already dead?"

"If you leave now, you can come back to tend to your parents' graves in the coming years. If you don't leave and something happens to you, there won't even be anyone to burn paper money for them anymore. Don't you think that makes sense?"

The old man stiffened his neck, but his eyes were red.

"What do you bunch of bastards know? How many more years can this old body of mine live? If I die out there, I'll just be a lonely ghost in a deserted grave. At least if I stay, I can die in my own home."

Li Hu was speechless for a moment, scratched his head, and couldn't say anything for a long time.

Qin Lie looked at the old man and felt uneasy.

However, there's no way to refute this with reason; what the elderly person wants isn't reason at all.

Lu Chen walked over, squatted down, and looked the old man in the eye.

"Old man, to tell you the truth, we came here to settle things here. Once we've done it, you can come back again."

"It's not that I'm kicking you out, I just want you to go somewhere safe and quiet for a while. Once things have calmed down, I'll personally send someone to bring you back. What do you think?"

The old man stared at Lu Chen with his cloudy eyes for a long time, then slowly squatted down against the door frame, muttering to himself.

"Can I come back?"

"able!"

Lu Chen answered very decisively.

While they were talking, Qin Lie led his horse quietly to the old locust tree at the east end of the village.

This old locust tree must be quite old; it would take two or three people to encircle it.

But now the branches are bare, and a thick layer of fallen leaves covers the ground beneath the tree, just as the village chief said, they are all gray.

Qin Lie squatted down and picked up a leaf.

The leaves are very brittle; they crumble into powder with a gentle crushing motion.

Qin Lie activated his Qi Observation Technique, and the scene before him slowly changed.

A faint gray aura clung to the gray leaves, almost invisible.

This thing was different from the demonic energy he had seen before. Demonic energy was murky and carried a fierce, fishy smell.

But the gray aura before them was not menacing; it was quiet and exuded an indescribable stillness.

This aura must have been drifting from the direction of Broken Wind Gorge.

If that's the case, then the seal in Broken Wind Gorge might really be starting to loosen, affecting even villages this far away. Things are probably not peaceful there anymore.

"Have you figured anything out?"

Lu Chen's voice came from behind him, but Qin Lie hadn't heard when he arrived.

"Boss Lu, there's a grayish aura on these leaves. It's not demonic energy, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. It might be coming from Broken Wind Gorge."

"This village is so far from Broken Wind Gorge, yet it's already tainted with this aura, which means that a lot of things have leaked out from Broken Wind Gorge."

Lu Chen looked northwest in the direction he was pointing.

Over there are endless mountain ranges, which don't look like a place that can bring peace of mind.

By the time the sun was setting, most of the villagers had finally evacuated.

The old man who refused to leave was eventually taken away in an oxcart.

Before leaving, he clung to the cart and looked back at the village several times.

Qin Lie and his companions didn't stay in the village long. After feeding their warhorses, they continued heading northwest.

The official road gradually came to an end, turning into a narrow mountain path.

The mountains on both sides got closer and closer until eventually all you could see when you looked up was a thin sliver of sky overhead.

The wind howled as it rushed in from the gorge ahead.

The voice was strange, sometimes high, sometimes low, intermittent, somewhat like someone speaking in a low voice in front of you, but you couldn't hear what they were saying.

Li Hu walked at the front, his mouth, which was usually always grinning, was now tightly pursed.

"This wind is really damn weird! I've traveled all over the country for so many years and heard all sorts of wind, but this is the first time I've heard anything so unsettling."

Xu Qinghe walked behind Qin Lie carrying his booklet, and unusually took the initiative to speak.

"This is no ordinary mountain. The terrain of the mountain pass is special, which traps the sound inside and makes it bounce back and forth. Then, the air leaking out of Duanfeng Gorge stirs it up, resulting in this noise."

"It sounds like someone is talking, and it's pretty much the same. Remember, when you go in, don't respond to anything you hear."

Qin Lie turned around and looked at Xu Qinghe.

"Why can't they respond? Is there some kind of reason behind this?"

Xu Qinghe glanced at him.

"The old battlefield is full of mixed things. Some of the sounds are the lingering thoughts of the dead before they died. If you respond, it will take your voice as a call and may follow your voice to come closer. It's better to keep quiet and go in without causing any trouble."

After hearing Xu Qinghe's explanation, Qin Lie shuddered and unconsciously tightened his grip on the hilt of his knife.

After walking for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, they suddenly heard a sound.

Boom!

Just one sound.

The sound was muffled, as if it came from very, very deep underground. But that one sound made Qin Lie freeze for a moment.

He felt as if the sound hadn't reached his ears at all, but rather had struck his chest directly, causing a tightness in his chest and making it hard to breathe.

War drums!

It really did sound like war drums!

Qin Lie instinctively reined in his horse, and Li Hu, Lu Chen, and the others also stopped. They exchanged glances, but no one said a word.

However, the meaning they want to convey is very clear, so we need to be careful from now on.

As Qin Lie looked ahead along the mountain path, the mountain range suddenly opened up considerably. In the deepest part of the valley, he saw the old pass of Duanfeng Gorge.

The pass looked very large, but it had long been dilapidated. Half of the city wall had collapsed, and the remaining wall was covered with withered vines, dark and murky.

From a distance, the pass looked like a giant beast that had been dead for a very long time, lying motionless at the end of the valley.

Although it was completely dead, its massive skeleton was still there, exuding an indescribable sense of oppression, giving people a creepy feeling just by looking at it from afar.

Qin Lie took a deep breath and quietly activated his Qi Observation Technique.

Upon seeing this, his breath caught in his throat again.

Inside that pass, wisps of grayish-black aura seeped out little by little through the cracks in the collapsed walls and the half-open city gate.

The breath flowed very slowly, but very evenly.

In and out, in and out...

Qin Lie followed this rhythm for a while, feeling the hairs on the back of his head stand up one by one.

"Boss Lu, there's a gray aura flowing out of that pass ahead, just like we saw before."

"It doesn't look like demonic energy. It's coming in and out rhythmically. It's more like something breathing."

Before Lu Chen could speak, Li Hu spoke first.

"You're speaking so politely! Why are you making it sound so scary? It's just a city gate; how could it be breathing?"